I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

Monthly Garden Chores for January – East Coast Edition

The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosureBy Mavis Butterfield on January 12, 2014 · 7 Comments

This is a guest post written by my buddy Heather from Massachusetts. I thought it would be fun this year to post Monthly Garden Chores from both the West Coast and East Coast. You can see my January garden plans for my Seattle, Washington garden HERE.

Hi everyone,

Our friend Mavis and I have often wished we were neighbors. We both have teenagers {and their busy sports schedules}, chickens, gardens in suburbia backyards, and we love DIY projects! The main difference is we live on opposite coasts and that means drastically different garden zones and garden season rhythms, plus it makes popping over for some tea, coffee and muffins a bit more difficult.

So she asked me to put together a garden update from the east coast. Here is southeast Massachusetts I’m in zone 5b, which means, for now, we have to be a little more patient for spring. But come spring and summer, absolutely everything blooms. The flowers, the bushes and the trees – the memory of spring in New England keeps me here all.year.long!

Seeds I’m Starting Indoors this Month:

In years past I’ve started seeds in a windowsill only to have them grow spindly and pathetic in the weak New England pre-spring sunshine. I would usually struggle along with seedlings until Mother’s Day and then hit a local greenhouse like the sunshine-starved, cabin-fevered, pasty looking new englanders we are.

The last frost date is around the third week in May, but gardeners don’t dare plant until May 20th. This year Santa brought me grow lights and I am BEYOND excited, I’ve been stalking the UPS tracking website, *hopping up and down*, it should be here any day!!

What I Plan to Transplant Outside this Month:

Does snow count? Earlier in the fall I enriched my soil with horse manure, leaves and chicken poo. So for now, I gaze upon my snowy heaps and dream of the lush soil I’ll have come May! And of course, begin sketching out my garden plan.

What I plan to Harvest This Month:

Eggs. My four girls are still pumpin’ out 2-3 eggs a day. We have four cold-hardy, good laying hens that we got last April. Two are Rhode Island Reds (Agnus and RoadRunner) and two are Black Sexlinks (Mr. Bubblesworth and Goldfinger). In the summer four eggs a day is enough for a dozen eggs for us and we sell the other dozen to a family in town.

Trees and Shrubs:

Our Meyer Lemon was brought inside in the fall and promptly produced 9 lemons! For some reason one little green lemon has gone into hybernation mode – it may or may not have something to do with the 68* house temp ;). I’ll be ordering citrus fertilizer this month to help it prepare for spring.

Weed and Pest Control:

Last year we had a substantial problem with CHIPMUNKS. And not the cute adorable kind. The vengeful, tomato scarfing kind. One of the good things about a long cold winter is that is arrests the insects and gives us gardeners time to study up on a solution!

Lawn Care:

The HH is really great about snow blowing paths all over the yard for me. One to the chicken coop :), one to the shed, and one whole track around the house so our two greyhounds can get a lap or two in on those cold, snowy days.

Great post–do you have anyone here in Texas who can post gardening chores for this month? My biggest problem is that we may be moving, so I don’t know what to do, except perhaps plant containers and some pallets, because then I can take it with me if we go. I figure I’ll cover everything with a trap to protect it during the 40 mile trip to the new place. I’m growin’ SOMETHING this year!

Be happy to be the Southeastern coorespondent!!!! We have chickens, big heirloom garden, and there is a cattle farm behind us that we visit often 🙂 Living on 2.5 acres in SC with mild temps. The hubby and I have degrees in Horticulture and have lived here for over 13yrs. We went from 2 chickens living in suburbia with the playhouse coop that I submitted and was published on this site….fast forward 1yr and now we have over 10 hens (maybe a few roos in our new batch) and working on a new coop to fit all the ladies and room for expansion. The garden is ever growing and I read seed catalogs like they are fashion magazines.

Do you know of a gardening site similar to yours, but for the Southeast? I love what you do and are doing, and your wonderful outlook on life, but sometimes the gardening information and activities do not translated well to the different growing and climate conditions of South Carolina!

This was such a refreshing, helpful post.. thanks Mavis and Heather! I am in southern Vermont, so it was nice to read a “Mavis-esque” garden update, but one which applies to our area. I also feel lazy when I read everything Mavis is up to! Just starting to think about which seeds to start and when. I have the grow lights, but it is difficult to keep the seedlings from drying out (we heat with a wood stove). Any tips on how to work around that? (I am eyeing the humidifier by my bedside).

This just goes to show that friendship is not bound by time or distance. Thanks for sharing! I feel renewed!

I was just going to comment, but then I saw yours and figured I’d just say ‘agree’. I’m in Nova Scotia, Canada – we only moved here last year, but I think I’m stretching it when I say we’re a 5A…and we heat with wood too…love the helpful post as well.